"Most noble goals can remain so only in principle: carnage and misery form a very large part of how things come to fruition" Aliette de Bodard (author ) "Author Spotlight" interview in Lightspeed Magazine #30, November

How often that happens!

A confession - the Eru/Aule conversation is one of the few places where , for me, Tolkien irritates me stylistically. i can't take all the thee/thou/thine seriously. Sounds too much like a lift from the King James Bible. Does this passage clang for anyone else, or is it just me?

In our last thread we discussed whether something selfish about the Valar was surfacing. Continuing that theme, I notice that 3 of them are now wanting their own special kind of sentient creatures: is there a bit of Melkor in all Valar, perhaps?

Lastly- I wonder whether the bit about the Ents is retrofitted? Treebeard says that the Elves woke them up: is that because he doesn't know the Yavanna part of the story, or because Tolkien has had to dig himself out of having allowed the Elves to do something he later decided was the preserve of Eru only?